Is this still weird now? Or maybe meant seriously? The question arises at the latest when Romano thinks in detail about what is hanging “listlessly, small and ugly at the bottom of my tummy”. The piece with the explicit title “Penis (The Song of the Penis)” actually begins as a somewhat complex examination of the topics of vulnerable masculinity, incels and misogyny, but then devolves into an over-the-top fantasy of potency with an unabashed and then somehow not quite appropriate pleasure in rhyming: “I can’t help the anger / When will I finally get a hard-on?”
You also have to admire the courage with which Romano simply ignores pop, gender and coolness categories
With his fourth album KÖRPER, Romano, a convinced Köpenicker and testimonial of the Berlin S-Bahn, not only tries to continue his basic principle of being somehow cool, penetratingly humane and at the same time childlike, but also expands it into a serious concept album.
On BODY, Romano talks about body parts to the fascinatingly reduced beats of Siriusmo – from the “nose” to the “ass”, but also about his famous “braids” and a “polyester heart”. Aspects of masculinity are discussed again and again; it’s about being born and giving birth, about sexuality, finding identity and, again and again, about the military. This sometimes veers into the surreal, all too often into the absurd, but you also have to admire the courage with which Romano doesn’t dissolve pop, gender and cool categories so much as simply ignore them.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
